


Got to keep it locked tight (If I'm gonna survive)

by MYuzuki



Series: No matter what’s in front of me (I’ll keep fighting til I’ve won) [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingsglaive
Genre: A subplot comes into more direct focus!, Friendship, Gen, Magic, Male-Female Friendship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ring of the Lucii (Final Fantasy XV), This could perhaps be considered a bit of a breather in between the more serious drabbles, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: This time, when Nyx wakes up he's rather befuddled to find himself in a hospital bed.
Relationships: Crowe Altius & Nyx Ulric
Series: No matter what’s in front of me (I’ll keep fighting til I’ve won) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897525
Comments: 10
Kudos: 149





	Got to keep it locked tight (If I'm gonna survive)

**Got to** **keep it locked tight (If I** **'m gonna survive)**

* * *

This time, when Nyx wakes up he's rather befuddled to find himself in a hospital bed.

It is, admittedly, less alarming than waking up in his apartment immediately after dying. But given the fact that the last thing he remembers is collapsing after Glauca's arrest, he's not precisely at ease with his current set of circumstances, either.

He's lurching upright with the intent to haul himself out of bed when Crowe appears in his field of vision, scowling like she's about to hurl a lightning storm at his face.

"You," she says, "are a dumbass."

Nyx freezes mid-motion, because he knows _that tone_ , it's the one Crowe uses right before she tears into someone and he doesn't want that someone to be him.

He can't just sit here, though, not when he doesn't know what's going on, now when he doesn't know where Glauca is, not when-

"For fuck's sake, stop trying to stand up," Crowe snaps, shoving at him just hard enough to make him flop back down into bed. "If the doctors catch you trying to leave, they're going to sedate you again."

"Again?" Nyx echoes with a frown, then winces at the sudden sharp tug of pain in his shoulder. He glances over at it, and then everything clicks into place as he spots the blood-stained bandages. "Oh. Right."

Crowe snorts, shaking her head in exasperation. " _Oh_ , he says. You were shot, asshole, why didn't you say anything?"

Nyx shrugs, winces again as the movement pulls at the injury, and then sighs. "Had to prioritize," he replies. "Dealing Drautos -with Glauca- was too important to risk any sort of delay."

"Nyx, you could have _died_ ," Crowe says, strident and fierce and all but radiating aggravation over his perceived lack of self-preservation.

Nyx, meanwhile, gives a laugh that cracks in his throat, rough and almost painful. _I did die_ , he wants to say, the words clamoring to spill out of his mouth so desperately that he has to bite down on his tongue to keep them trapped behind his teeth. _And then I came back._

"I'm fine," he says instead, once he's got himself under control enough to not start scaring his friend with tales of falling Walls, dead kings, and a magic that had burned him alive even as he used it to fight an impossible battle. "Really," he adds when all Crowe does is glower at him in a disapproving fashion. "Lazarus got in a lucky shot when he ambushed me earlier, that's all. I'll be fine."

Crowe purses her lips, clearly unhappy. "I should have lit his traitorous ass on fire when I had the chance," she mutters darkly before shaking her head. "Too late now, I guess, since he's locked up in a holding cell along with Drautos. Anyway, I think it was a little more than 'a lucky shot'," she goes on. "The doctors who looked you over said that a wound like that compounded with the blood loss it caused would have killed anyone else. In fact, they weren't quite sure why it hadn't killed _you_ ," she adds.

Nyx scowls, even as an itch of something burns under his skin, an echo of the power that had coursed through his body during that fateful battle during the fall of Insomnia. _You've gotta be kidding me_ , he thinks, because suddenly everything makes more and less sense all at once. "Guess I just got lucky," he says aloud, because saying _I put on the Ring of the Lucii in a future that isn't going to happen and I think some of the magic is still stuck in my body for some reason_ would only serve to get him transferred out his nice normal hospital room into a less spacious padded cell.

He's not even sure he's right, anyway; for all he knows, maybe it's just the painkillers he's on making him feel like this. And it's not something he can do anything about it right now regardless, so he carefully sets the thought aside for later consideration and determinedly doesn't think about the potential ramifications of such a thing.

Crowe, meanwhile, scowls at him. "You're a dumbass," she tells him again. "The next time you get critically wounded maybe give someone a head's up before you fucking _collapse_ from blood loss, alright?"

"I'm not really planning a repeat performance," Nyx remarks dryly, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender when Crowe makes an angry sound in the back of her throat, "but I promise to let someone know the next time I get seriously injured while uncovering a massive conspiracy against the kingdom."

She huffs at him, thoroughly unamused. "Dumbass," she repeats firmly, as if telling him so a third time will finally make it sink in. "Libertus and Pelna are busy keeping the rest of the Glaives in line while the King and his advisors decide what to do with us," she goes on, some of the fierceness leaking out of her expression to be replaced with a sort of wary exhaustion, "but they'll be glad to hear that you've regained consciousness. Lib'll probably come running up here to see you for himself," she adds, a ghost of a smile quirking her lips at the corners. "I think he nearly had a heart attack when you swooned the way you did."

"Excuse you," Nyx says, sputtering indignantly, "I did not fucking swoon, you take that back right now."

Crowe cackles, because she's a terrible friend and Nyx loves her for it. "Swooned like a maiden in a romance novel," she teases, and doesn't even bother ducking when Nyx tosses a pillow at her face.

( _This is okay_ , he thinks, slumping back in bed as something that might be hope flickers to life in his chest at the sight of Crowe, vibrant and alive in front of him even as Drautos and Lazarus rot away in the dungeons below the Citadel. _Everything is going to be okay._ )


End file.
